And Thus Fall Heralds a Time of Fear
by Rikkamaru
Summary: Pitch Black met his first true believer in a backwater village where fear ruled all. It certainly makes life more interesting when his believer is about as feared as the dragons he tames. How Hiccup becomes a spirit in the RotG-verse. Gen. One-shot, No Pairings.


Don't own HTTYD or RoTG.

Don't own the Cover Art.

And Thus Fall Heralds a Time of Fear

* * *

Pitch Black met his first true believer in a backwater place where fear ruled all. Fear of death, fear of the cold, fear of the dragons that raided the land viciously, even fear of one another. The land was shrouded in fear, and it called to him like a long lost lover. And it was as he reveled in the fear all around him while the dragons tried to burn the village to the ground that a pair of acid green eyes looked up and locked onto his form.

His first true believer was a gangly thing, long limbs that lacked the muscle which everyone else had. But his eyes gave away his true peculiarity; in the depths of his acid eyes shone a cunning sharp enough to cleave anything in half, something no one else in the village truly had. And it was because of this that the village shunned his believer. As he feared their pointless violence, they feared his intelligence, which at times could kill far more quickly than they ever could.

But the boy looked up one day, and saw Pitch reveling in their terror, but thought nothing of it. When he saw Pitch again, he nodded in greeting, ignoring the shifty eyes and nervous glances his movement incited.

That was when Pitch first noticed him and, for once in his immortal life, fear and joy both overcame the Creature of Fear himself. But despite these baffling emotions that overtook him for the moment, he found himself drawn to the boy with a quicksilver wit. He watched as the boy _feared_ every day of his life and yet faced it all with gritted teeth (or were those bared fangs? Even before everyone else saw his connection to the dragons, Pitch had known) and pushed on.

This small boy called to Pitch, both in his ability to face his own fears since the day his mother had died, and in the way his presence unnerved the other Vikings. The way they whispered, eyes ever on him as he brushed by them on the street, was a familiar thing. As was the growing look in the boys eyes, the blooming distain and resignation; these made Pitch perch outside of his window, and though the boy looked surprised, he smiled and welcomed the Nightmare King in, and some of the frost thawed from his eyes.

"Loki's son" they called the boy, "Bringer of chaos; wit too sharp," the list went on, but Pitch saw that and yet didn't at all. At times he saw the Chaos Child they did, his intelligence making him balance on the knife's edge between genius and insanity, and at other times he saw a small child that looked to him for protection, for help. He saw a little creature that made him feel more like Kozmotis Pitchiner than Pitch Black.

And with these thoughts came a surprising amount of possessiveness. It wasn't too noticeable to those that don't know him, but there were days where it felt as if the Man in the Moon was looking down at his actions, disapproving. He repressed a sneer; Prince Lunaoff had no say in his decisions anymore, not when he didn't save him from…_anything (himself)_.

He was brought from his thoughts as, like it has every night thus far, a stream of golden sand entered the room and reached out for his little believer. And, just like he has done every night since he began lounging in the boy's room, Pitch intercepted the sand, tainting it black and transforming it into a gruesome Nightmare.

The boy didn't stir at all, the sand never touching him and thus the Nightmare never disturbing his rest. The wind ruffled his hair, brown like leaves in autumn, and Pitch closed the window without thought, sending the Nightmare to wait alongside its siblings.

* * *

When Pitch returned two years later, having needed to hide from those Guardians of Lunaoff's, he entered the boy's room from the window. And was then brutally tackled and near-mauled by a snarling black dragon with toxic green eyes.

The boy managed to call the beast off and Pitch saw that some things had changed with his little believer. He held himself as if he were finally at ease in his own skin. And, on a more noticeable point, his left foot and ankle were gone, replaced with a mechanism of wood and metal. The dragon was similarly crippled, its left tail fin gone and replaced with a bright red flag.

The boy sat him down and explained everything that had happened in the two years he had missed, and Pitch was reluctantly impressed. It appears that his believer was quite skilled at herding cats or, at the very least, dragons.

Pitch felt his respect for his little believer grow, along with some other emotion that Pitch had never felt before.

Fondness, perhaps?

* * *

When his boy stepped out into the village, Pitch expected the people to not fear him as they did before, and he was correct – in a way.

The village feared his believer even _more_.

It was in the way they smiled and placated him, the way they watched their dragons who in turn watched the boy for their own behavioral cues. His smiles led to purring, his frowns growls that rattled the island itself. One wrong move against the boy would lead to the entire pack turning against the village and burning it to the ground.

The village knew this.

His believer did not.

Pitch basked in the irony and new onslaught of fear.

* * *

"You believe in me, why do you not believe in the others?" Pitch asks one day as the boy lounges in a valley with the black dragon and a small green dragon.

"Others?" The boy prompts, and Pitch elaborates.

"The Guardians. They "protect" children with their hope, wonder, memories and dreams." He lists their aspects with a sneer, but breaks from his hateful stupor when the boy snorts.

"We're Vikings; hope and wonder abandoned us a long time ago. We're treated as adults before we lose our first tooth; most of us can't remember a pleasant childhood, or a childhood at all, really. All that leaves is dreams and," here he gives Pitch a knowing look, "I don't put much stock in having pleasant dreams. I'd rather not have dreams at all." Both dragons snorted in agreement, and Pitch wondered at the fondness the boy instilled in him.

* * *

Four years go by quite quickly and Pitch is pleased with himself. Tainting every strand of dream sand that tries to reach the boy every night has led to a vast army of Nightmares forming, and he may attack soon with the numbers he's amassed.

The boy has grown a great deal, finally gaining some height and muscle from the work he does in the forge. Acid green eyes haven't lost a single shade of their intensity or wit, and he moves with a grace not unlike a dragon despite his prosthetic.

The black dragon moves in sync with the boy, the two knowing what the other is thinking and feeling with a look and communicating without a sound. The small green dragon struggles at times, but can keep up and is often found perched on his master's shoulders.

The dragons in the village still look to the boy for guidance, and to Pitch it seems rather obvious that the boy in turn looks to the dragons for companionship.

With each year the fear for the boy grows, and Pitch wonders if the boy can sense it, his eyes picking up their prey-like shuffles and looks.

He was far too much a dragon for the village sheep.

* * *

Pitch didn't know what to think as he hovered uselessly over the boy's crumpled form, the black dragon trying its hardest to reach him as it crawled over, its tail broken and wings tattered. The small green dragon was just as worried, trying – and failing – to staunch the blood flowing from the wound in his side.

A force had arrived earlier that week, a larger Viking tribe that had decided to tame dragons as the boy's village had. The battle had been brutal and bloody, even with the boy able to turn the other tribe's dragons against them with each that he met.

And then one of the enemy archers had gotten lucky.

"Pitch," the boy called, and the Nightmare King felt what could only have been remorse as the boy-now-man's eyes locked onto him, ignoring and accepting his approaching death all at once. "What happens now?"

"How would I know," Pitch scoffed, "I've been dead for far too long." The boy began to laugh, which dissolved into a bloody series of coughs.

"Guess I'll just have to find out; right, Toothless?" The black dragon chirped back sadly, and Pitch knew that the dragon was prepared to follow his master, either to life or what lay beyond. The black dragon at last reached the fallen boy-man, and lay down beside him, extending a wing to cover him from the rest of the world.

Pitch looked away at last, and shot a hateful glance at the sky – where the moon was just beginning to rise. "Can I not be happy? Can I not be at peace with the one believer I'll probably ever have?!" he half-asked, half-shouted at his once-friend and ally. He looked away from the orb in disgust, but found the sight that greeted him to be different from when he last looked.

The black dragon's chest had stopped; a sign that both he and his partner were no longer of the living. But a light was seeping from his form, dark purple and white in color. It consumed him, and grew so bright that it blinded Pitch for but a moment.

But that moment was all that was needed.

When Pitch looked back, the boy was still lying on his side, but his chest had resumed the rise and fall of the living. A pair of dark brown wings with lighter brown specks sprouted from his back along with a tail of the same coloration which twitched quietly on the ground. He had brown ear flaps instead of human ears, as well as a pair of brown horns that resembled the black dragon's, and his hands and feet ended in claws now. His left leg was no longer a stump, the wood and metal meshing seamlessly with flesh and altered to resemble a dragon's, but he was no longer alive either.

The black dragon had united their souls together so that the boy's spirit could linger in the world of the living. The boy was now complete.

The boy opened his eyes, and stumbled to his feet. He didn't mourn his dragon's absence, for could feel how their souls had been joined so that they would never part, but it was a near thing. As it was, a single tear rolled down his face and, when it touched the ground, made the grass beneath him wither. "Pitch? What happened?" he asked, idly petting the small green dragon as it purred and perched on his shoulder.

The Nightmare King looked at his first believer as the young man surveyed the world around them. "You're an Autumn Spirit now, Hiccup. It looks like your new life has just begun."

* * *

Sorry if this doesn't make that much sense. In all honesty, this actually stopped making sense to me about half-way through it.

This was actually inspired by the severe _lack_ of stories in which Hiccup and Pitch get along, if only because I think they actually would hit it off really well together.

This isn't meant to be taken as romantic, so it's really up to you if you think it is so.

Please review.

Ja ne!


End file.
